Very well done to them and very well done to all of the schools who took part. The grand final took place yesterday at City Hall with 13 schools who had won their way through heats and semi finals to compete at solving 24®Game puzzle cards. Each card has four numbers; you can add, subtract, multiply or divide in any combination, but you must use all four numbers to make 24. Continue reading Count On Us Challenge: Congratulations to Kender School!→

From September 2014 it will be compulsory for schools to teach financial education. This will be built in to the mathematics and the citizenship curricula. See this article from the Daily Telegraph. Notice the picture of school life that they choose to illustrate the article with. This is how students learn; in rows at individual desks, looking seriously bored! The trouble is that a good proportion of the materials available for ‘financial education’ in schools is perfect for this scenario. Standard worksheet based discussion and practice activities are the norm and work in the same way that makes PSHE such a disappointing subject, taught by non-specialists, with no exam, it is hard to see the purpose when you are in school.

What makes these important things come alive is getting students into the setting. They have to care about the issue in order to engage with the ideas. I have seen fantastic drugs education sessions where former users and dealers have come in and talked to teenagers about their experience and where they are now. It is edgy, but it is real and they certainly listen!

Finance is tricky. Kids in school rarely have any real need to save with interest and if they have a bank account, their main worry is losing their cash. Certainly, they cannot borrow beyond their means or need to budget in a life changing way. Some, certainly, have life experiences that may necessitate any or all of these, but they are a small albeit important minority.

We have been working in financial education for over a decade. As a development of the Number Partners project which I was director of for many years, we designed a series of large format board games designed to set up scenarios in which players have to make important financial decisions: how to invest a small amount of capital, to generate profits to reinvest. Managing money between cash and different bank accounts, to enable purchasing but retaining security. Budgetting for a holiday and managing exchange rates. Making the life transition from school to work, while meeting your life goals.

The power of a board game is that the social setting frames the decision making. You are playing with real people who you have to engage with, framed by the settings of the games. The games were trialled in very ordinary schools, in classrooms with groups of students and have been widely used in different settings since. The effect is impressive. Students talk to each other about their financial decision making, developing strategies to succeed in that setting. Naturally, winning strategies involve good financial decision making.

We set up a web site to showcase the games. So see what you think. All of the games have teacher guides with extra materials and school use ideas. Please get back to us with your questions and thoughts. But, when you plan to deliver financial education this September, get your students into a setting in which they care. Only then will they be able to make decisions in a way that matters to them.

This is a shameless commercial post because I am really excited that schools who have bought our Illuminate Gifted and Talented Course for key stage 3 have posted on-line reviews on the National STEM centre web site. Obviously I would only be saying this if they like it, but they really like it a lot and that is really exciting.

Our aim was to produce a course in mathematics, so that school students had the opportunity to see what Maths is really all about. It is full of puzzles and games and tricky things to think about. But it takes them to the next level by unpicking fundamental ideas notably proof and isomorphism and giving students an incite. Maths gives a way of definitively saying how we know what we know. We use Pythagoras Theorem to unpick the idea of proof. From the essential structuring idea that sets up the proof to the language needed to be clear and the sequencing of the statements to construct the complete argument. It is thrilling that schools are reporting that students are able and interested to work on this. It is hard, but interesting things are, but students are game to carry on. Then we compare cyclic and Klein groups with isometries and modulo arithmetic. I cannot think there is anything more wonderful for the beginning mathematician to see that we can show that two complete areas of operation, so apparently dissimilar as arithmetic of clocks and transformational geometry have exactly the same underlying structure and hence, if we know something about one, we necessarily know the same thing about the other. That, to me is what maths is really all about. The mechanical processes that students learn for their GCSE and A Levels give no insight into this amazing world.

So, well done to those schools for being brave enough to work this way and really well done to the students who are becoming serious young mathematicians. Clearly we would be delighted for you to try it too. Just ask for some trial materials of the Illuminate course.

Also, come to ATM sessions and meet Danny Brown. Danny is the head of maths at the Greenwich Free School and he is getting his kids working on deep mathematical ideas all the time. Danny has presented regularly to ATM London Branch and has a web site of the amazing stuff he does. I persuaded Danny to get this out in book form and the first volume, on Number, is nearly ready, so look out for that.

OK, so I came to this by being responsible for public maths events for maths year 2000. We had 22 shopping centre events, at the end of January 2001, where we set up staffed table stands with maths activities. It was humbling to see ordinary shoppers give up on Sainsburys and spend the day doing maths puzzles and games. So, the I end up being a part time shop keeper selling maths games and puzzles. It is just great to keep being reminded that people love doing this stuff. Continue reading Playing Maths Games Makes You Do Better at School!→

Island Life is a game for ages 8 to 13 (but is great to play by anyone). There are two versions, both of which come with the same board, but are different games with different components.
The board shows three holiday islands with a range of exciting attractions, linked by rail, road and ferry. Naturally, you will be cycling around these dream islands, so you choose a coloured bicycle and rider as your playing piece. Continue reading Our Island Life Game→

As owners of a games shop we are honour bound to play games at Christmas! No really, we do love them. So, Val, Katie (13) and I played a game of Risk. Now Risk is not so PC overall but, well, when you have made an alliance with the mass armies (in this case of the evil of middle earth) and they have attacked your opponent on your behalf and your turn comes round and you now realise you can renege on your agreement and wipe them out … well that is tough. Emotion, scruples, morality all bound up in tough decision making. Now I think you really (up to a point seriously) do have to debrief after a game like that, but is sure is that you are in the situation making the decisions … a history lesson for sure but not just discussing the issues cold. Continue reading Making it ‘Real’→

I had an interesting conversation with a former maths teacher who was telling me how much she disliked ‘investigations’. She said that you could never tell whether a student had done the work themselves or if their Dad had done it for them. It was clear to me that steering the conversation round to wondering about the difference between investigating mathematically and submitting GCSE coursework, wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I had to nod and force a polite smile. On one level it was deeply depressing how pleased maths teachers were when GCSE coursework was abandoned for maths exams. On the other, the whole process had been so discredited … Continue reading Assessment→